Apple Agrees to Pay $490M to Settle Lawsuit Alleging That Tim Cook Defrauded Shareholders

[maxoakland]

I agree that someone needs to be around to do the actual work. However, CEOs and Boards think and plan in terms of years; workers are usually focused on the task today or next week. And thus, the “workers“ could survive for awhile without a CEO. But the company overall will eventually suffer and the “workers” will suffer as well.

Yes, a company will eventually suffer without a plan. But my point is the company would immediately grind to a halt without workers

Also, a CEO isn’t the only possible planner for a company. Cooperatives run democratically. That’s an exciting possibility to make working at companies better since you’d have more say

 

[betabeta]

Cook is giving what Apple’s (roughly) 1 billion customers want. Year after year after year. And is why Apple is one of the most successful tech companies in the world.

This is so true, you can't argue with that at all, Cook was the right man for the job. But a part of me misses the old Apple right now, seems to me Apple lost focus on what Jobs was trying to build, need to get back that focus, keep it simple and it has to work. I think Jobs vision even back in the late 70's was really just like AI, and Siri was his start on that but Cook and company let Siri flounder while spending billions on the secret car, yeah I know that was Jobs idea, but more should have been spent on Siri, others were going past it, it started to be a joke and it was really the first. Why didn't Apple have something better than Deep Mind? They could have.

Anyway I give Cook credit where credit is due, not sure anyone else could have done what he did, and Jobs knew that. But maybe a new hungry leader that can rally this pirate ship to fight in the current AI wars is needed.

I think it's clear the winner in AI, will lead the next wave. It's going to bring Jobs vision of a computer that fades into the background so you don't know you're using a computer, or have to ever go into settings or pick options. it's going to make doing tasks as simple as just asking, the interface will be very human. It's exactly what Jobs talked about from the start.

If Apple gets AI wrong, Apple will suffer, and right now The Big Redmond Machine is the one with Pirate flag flying high, gobbling up ALL the AI pieces and making windows look like MacOS to boot. I still hope Cook has something Cooking we don't know about on AI. I'm hopeful, but concerned seeing the Google AI deal pop up.

 

[citysnaps]

Anyway I give Cook credit where credit is due, not sure anyone else could have done what he did, and Jobs knew that. But maybe a new hungry leader that can rally this pirate ship to fight in the current AI wars is needed.

And one should remember that Jobs couldn't have done what he did releasing Macintosh without a HUGE assist from Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). That's where he got a personal tour of their mouse-driven graphical computer interface in PARC's lab, that he subsequently "borrowed" for use in Macintosh. A huge hat-tip is also due to Doug Englebart who invented the computer mouse while working at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) in Menlo Park California.

And...Jobs engaging with and Apple engineers working closely with Motorola engineers (the inventors of cellular telephony) on the ROKR phone, which ultimately lead to iPhone. Without closely working with Moto engineers on ROKR, iPhone would never have got off the ground in a timely manner.

What people forget is all forward looking successful tech companies always have multiple robust R&D programs underway, where just a small percentage of projects ultimately lead to successful commercial products. Apple Car is one that didn't make it. The good news is that Apple pulled out of that space, likely realizing competition was too fierce to bring a competitive Apple Car to market at a reasonable price for most consumers, especially with Chinese developed low cost EVs that will soon be entering the market.

"Anyway I give Cook credit where credit is due, not sure anyone else could have done what he did, and Jobs knew that. But maybe a new hungry leader that can rally this pirate ship to fight in the current AI wars is needed."

Apple apparently has a robust AI R&D program that's been underway for awhile. We'll see how that turns out.

 

[maxoakland]

And one should remember that Jobs couldn't have done what he did releasing Macintosh without a HUGE assist from Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). That's where he got a personal tour of their mouse-driven graphical computer interface in PARC's lab, that he subsequently "borrowed" for use in Macintosh. A huge hat-tip is also due to Doug Englebart who invented the computer mouse while working at SRI (Stanford Research Institute) in Menlo Park California.

"He" didn't borrow it -- the Mac team did. And they didn't borrow it, they licensed it from Xerox. In other words, they paid for it. That's the right way to handle it

Jobs wasn't even the impetus to go to PARC. But he was smart enough to see the vision quickly